


they say there's a heaven for those who will wait

by redandgold



Category: Dead Poets Society (1989)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ghosts, Canonical Character Death, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-28
Updated: 2018-01-28
Packaged: 2019-03-10 12:22:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13501600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redandgold/pseuds/redandgold
Summary: "What's the matter, slick?" Neil asks, grinning at Charlie, who's frozen at the other side of the cave blinking at him. "You look like you've seen a ghost."





	they say there's a heaven for those who will wait

**Author's Note:**

  * For [brampersandon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/brampersandon/gifts).



> Hewwo dear giftee, happy chocolate box! You are fabulous, you writing is fabulous, your letters are fabulous, and I hope you like this even half as much as I love and admire you. <333
> 
> (And if you don't which is totally fine!!! let me know and I will go back to writing foobaw I promise. WHICH I PROLLY SHOULD'VE DONE IN THE FIRST PLACE BUT OH WELL. Shoves this in ur face love u)

"What's the matter, slick?" Neil asks, grinning at Charlie, who's frozen at the other side of the cave blinking at him. "You look like you've seen a ghost."

Charlie opens his mouth and no words come out. Charlie drops the coffee he's carrying and turns around and runs, Neil half-standing and making to follow, half-not knowing what was going on. He walks over to the front of the cave where the coffee is pooling on the ground like a bloodstain. Realises there's only one cup.

 

 

 

"I'm telling you, I saw him – "

"Charlie, don't do this, please – "

"He was right there, I swear to – "

They cram into the cave, fumbling over their long coats and scarves, hot breath fogging up the air around them. Neil sits up and grins at all of them. Somehow it feels like he hasn't seen anyone for ages, even though he's certain they were all sitting here yesterday. Charlie's the only one who looks spooked, which is strange because nothing fazes him; Knox looks angry, Meeks and Pitts look like they don’t know what to say, Todd looks like he's been crying.

"He’s right there," Charlie says. Presses his back against the stone of the cave and breathes out slow. Neil stares at them. It feels like there are words stuck in his throat and he can't cough them out, no matter how hard he tries.

Todd walks up to him. Walks right up to him and reaches a hand out, wavering and uncertain, like –

"You can't see me," Neil says.

Todd's fingers go straight through him. Neil feels something warm through his chest where his heart should be. Todd turns around and looks at Charlie, sighs.

"I'm here," Neil says. "Can you see me? I'm here."

"We need to let him go, Charlie." Todd's voice is quiet, gentle, and Neil thinks not for the first time that he'd make a good teacher if he was keen. Not least in the way that his shoulders are shaking as he speaks, and his voice cracks like the spidery-thin lines over a frozen lake beginning to thaw.

"Don't," Neil says. "I'm here. I'm right here."

 

 

 

He tries to leave the cave. The first time there's some sort of a barrier that throws him backwards; he lands awkwardly, but nothing hurts. The second time he manages to step outside, but he's barely gone ten feet before something seems to slow him down, like someone's tied weights to his shins and forearms. It's already dark but the moon is out, and the moonlight shines straight through the fingers that he raises to his face.

 

 

 

Charlie comes back after a week.

Neil thinks it's been a week, anyway. It's a bit hard to keep track of time when your watch isn't working and none of them had the sense to get a clock up, considering the amount of time they spent in there. Charlie walks in and his mouth is drawn into a thin line and he sneers his hello; Neil thinks he might be drunk.

"So you're back," he says. Sits down and stares at Neil.

"I guess," Neil says. Waves a hand. "You can see me?"

"Uh-huh. You look better than you used to."

"Neat." Neil is impressed despite himself.

"You're dead," Charlie says after a beat.

“I figured.”

“You don’t remember?”

"No." He's tried to remember what happened, but everything has fragmented in his mind, shards of glass scattered in front of a photograph he can't quite make out. There was a dream. A dream and summer and snow. He raises a hand to the side of his head. Some kind of a scar has formed, webbed and calloused.

"I suppose it doesn't matter." Charlie laughs. Raises the bottle Neil suddenly realises he's holding and drinks from it. "Could just be dreaming you up. A figment of my imagination."

"You do have a wild imagination," Neil says. Grins back wide. Nothing has changed and he's here, talking to his best friend, the staccato of the frenzied new age still loud in their ears. Like he could do anything, Puck and a crown of thorns. A spear waiting to be driven into his side.

They sit in the dark and look at each other for a second. Two seconds. Ten. Neil suddenly can't remember what they used to do in here; there was saxophone, the stupid little lamp he'd snatched from somewhere, the books that have begun to pile up in a corner dusty and unread. God of the Cave.

"Hey, Charlie," he says.

"The name is Nuwanda." Charlie manages the briefest of something that looks real. A spectre of a grin pulled out of him.

"Hey, Nuwanda."

"Yeah?"

"Guess I'm a dead poet now."

Neil expects Charlie to say something like _fuck off_ or _get out_ or _you're such an asshole_ , but instead something in Charlie's face closes off, the way a shadow might fall across the far side of a mountain. "Now more than ever,” he drawls, reading from a book Neil can’t see, “seems it rich to die, to cease upon the midnight with no pain, while thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad in such an ecstasy.”

The tips of the words sting, almost, without Neil knowing why. Like it’s some kind of an accusation though no one’s told him what he stands accused of. Charlie lifts a hand, fingers shaking ever so slightly, then he changes his mind and puts it down again.

 

 

 

Dreams are dreams because they're always within reach, no matter how infinitesimal the chance. Maybe I will become a best-selling poet. Maybe I will go to Paris. Maybe I will join the Royal Shakespeare Company. Dreams are dreams because you can chase them, because you can drown yourself in fantasy, pretend that one day a miracle is going to happen and you’re going to live happily ever after.

"I was good," he tells himself. It sounds hollow and faraway. Maybe I will come back to life. "I was really good."

 

 

 

There’s a strange kind of silver thread that hangs at the edge of his peripheral vision; he never sees it clearly enough to make it out completely, but whatever it is, it disappears when Charlie’s there. Neil follows him out of the cave once. He doesn’t vanish, and the thread doesn’t reappear. It must be some weird metaphysics thing, he thinks, hovering over the woods that Charlie muddles through, always a little bit behind. Maybe when people die a bit of their soul gets attached to someone else. Charlie was the first person to see him. Charlie is his best friend.

He follows Charlie around Hellton, taking in the quiet corridors now distant. No one seems to be speaking. Charlie swaggers like he’s still Nuwanda and full of verve, but there’s a shift in his shoulders that wasn’t there before. Todd walks past once, fingers jammed into his coat, eyes dead or dying. Neil realises that even if he could talk to him he wouldn’t know what to say.

There’s a suitcase lying open on Charlie’s bed. Clothes and books have been thrown haphazardly inside, two scarves, a familiar Playboy magazine. Charlie stands in the middle of the room with his arms folded and purses his lips. Neil perches himself on the edge of the bed, still trying to get a handle on his lack of substance; he sinks through the mattress and ends up on the floor instead.

“Where are you going?”

“Out,” Charlie says, dry.

"Nuwanda."

"I've been expelled."

"What?"

“I've been expelled," Charlie repeats. The edge of his grin is mazy, like lines in a mirage. "I punched Cameron. He told us to pin your death on Keating. Couldn't do that. So the little rat finks on me and I'm gone. You know the old man had it in for me anyway."

"Come of it, that's ridiculous. Can't your father say something?"

"My _father_? What are you, joking? He probably wants to send me to military school. Yes, sir, no, sir, I'll enjoy Berlin, sir."

"You can't go to military school."

"You think I want to?"

Charlie flops onto the bed and sighs, grabbing the pillow and dropping it over his face. Neil floats himself back up and leans over. Peers at Charlie and grins. They've spent countless evenings like this, Charlie throwing a strop about his latest Hellton fixation and Neil trying to laugh him out of it. You won't believe what my parents got me for Christmas. Oh, yeah? Can't be worse than mine. Fight me, slick. Come on. Just the two of them rolling on the floor, fistfuls of proper tie and suit and Charlie with his fierce grin and Neil laughing because he could.

Ah. Hell. Neil reaches out a hand and it goes straight through Charlie's arm. Charlie jumps.

"Jesus."

"Blasphemy," Neil says.

"Fuck you."

"Language."

"Jesus fucking Christ."

A tiny quirk has appeared on Charlie's face and Neil sits back, pleased with himself.

"Where'll you go, then?"

"Dunno." Charlie turns on his side and gives him a look. "Paris."

Neil laughs. "That's fine. Puffing on your pipe all day."

"Yeah."

There’s a pause.

"That's why." The words fall out of him before he's even noticed. Charlie raises an eyebrow.

"Why what?"

"Why I – why I'm like this."

 _Oh_ , he thinks. Like when you've been trying to look for something for ages and suddenly you find it in your hand. The summer and snow. The webbed scar on the side of his head. "My father wanted to send me to military school."

Charlie sits up. Everything is still in place, the case and the pillow and the desk, but in two seconds it's changed completely. Charlie's face is flat and drawn and Neil doesn't think he's ever seen him like this.

"You killed yourself," he says, "because your father wanted to send you to military school and you didn't want to fight him."

 Neil feels something strange pass through his body, a gust of wind or a prickle or something. "No," he says, hands curling up into fists. "You don't understand."

"What don't I understand?"

"It was me trying to – " Neil fumbles over the words even as they come rushing at him, _I've got to tell you how I feel_ – "I was fighting. It was the only way I could fight."

"What, killing yourself?" Charlie shakes his head slowly. "That's not fighting, that's an escape. That's running away and you always run away, don't you? You never stand your ground and you never stand up and you never – you never do something when it matters."

A flash of anger pulses through Neil, hot and searing. "Like you do?" he snaps. "You and your stupid phone and God and what the heck does any of that matter? What difference has that made? Just you getting beaten up like a sop and still no girls at Welton or the rest of it. Eating with your left hand when Nolan looked away – none of it matters, _Nuwanda_."

"You're _dead_."

The sharpness in Charlie's voice stops him even as he's getting into stride, so many things still to say. Stops him clean like a boxer's punch straight to his jaw.

"You're _dead_ and you're _gone._ And you never said anything. We could’ve helped, Neil. I’d have fought for you and you know it. And now I don’t know what else to do.”

The bottom of his lip is quivering and he slumps back down onto the bed. He's only seventeen, Neil remembers with a jolt, the same age as the rest of them, even though he had always appeared older. Worldly and weary at the same time. The brand of careless abandon so carefully calculated, designed to make everyone imagine more than they should. He's only seventeen.

"I'm still here," Neil says quietly, putting a hand to Charlie's face. For a moment he thinks he feels Charlie's skin, hot and tempered and alive, trembling with a rage he doesn't know where to direct. "Charlie. I didn't leave you."

Charlie looks up at him. Bares his teeth in something like a grin. Says, "You let me go."

 

 

Neil wakes up in the cave. He tries to switch on the God but his fingers don’t even touch it.

No one ever talks about how boring being a ghost is. It's fine for the ones who live in grand old English castles, he supposes, with fancy beds and lots of other ghosts to keep them company. There’s nothing in the cave. He doesn't know what to do when no one's watching.

Days slip into nights slip into weeks. He sits at the edge, some solid ground at last, watching the sun rise and set. Sometimes it's incredibly beautiful the way the leaves are tinged with gold. As if they were painted, each and every one by hand. We're not our skin of grime, we're not dread bleak dusty imageless locomotives, we're golden sunflowers inside, spied on by our own eyes under the shadow of the mad locomotive riverbank sunset.

No one ever talks about how ghosts sleep. Fitfully, restlessly, eyes opening every hour to face the same reality. You don't exist anymore. You are somewhere in the ground with a headstone that says _here lies Neil Perry a loving son._

He thinks of his father, sometimes, curled up in a chair barely remembering to breathe; he thinks of his mother more, made suddenly old. He thinks of Mr. Keating somewhere out there, wonders whether he’s still seizing the day. Thinks of Todd getting a new desk set. Thinks of Knox and his girl and whether they've already fallen apart.

Thinks of Charlie. He remembers Charlie most as a fourteen-year-old, skinny and already tieless, shirt untucked. On the first day he'd thrown a spitball behind Nolan's back and upended all of his food into Cameron's face. Neil had liked him immediately, if _liked_ was another word for _wanted to be_ ; he'd never known anyone the same as him, chin out stubborn and fist clenched not in anger but in triumph.

Everything Neil wants is out of reach. Floating like snowflakes in freefall. "How can I be brave," he'd asked Charlie once years ago, flicking through a book Charlie had smuggled out of the library at Nolan's insistence they never read it.

"Like this," Charlie had said, pushed down the book and kissed him.

In Paris there are winding cobblestone streets that lead nowhere; there are streetlamps scattered and props that haven't been used for years. He thinks of standing on a stage, bowing; thinks of catching Charlie's eye in the audience, smiling at a secret that only two of them know.

 

 

 

"Are you there?"

Neil wakes up with a start. He's in Charlie's room in Long Island. Charlie's sitting at his desk, pen in hand, looking more tired than Neil remembers.

"'Course I am, slick," Neil says. Charlie looks up and grins at him. It's almost like always.

 "The 'rents are thinking of sending me to Harvard." He pulls a face. "Did you know they have some crap prep school straight to uni?"

"Dinky boys in smart suits?" Neil laughs. "Can't think of what it might be like."

"I'm running away."

There's a pause.

"What?"

"I'm running away," Charlie repeats, his face set into the stubbornness Neil knows only too well. "I've got enough money saved and I figure I'll slum it out, or something. I'm pretty charming, you know."

"Charlie."

Charlie's eyes are gleaming. "It'll be great, Neil." He stands up and comes around to lean on his desk, shoulders thrumming with a sort of energy that doesn't go with his gauntness. "Abject poverty and the flourishing of life. Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, old time is still a-flying. Seize the day, boys. Let us not turn into the dust we breathe."

 _I am dust,_ Neil wants to say. Instead he shakes his head. "Your dad is going to throw a fit."

Charlie shrugs. "Let him. I've had enough of old people telling me what to do."

A slow grin spreads across Neil's face. This is how you be brave. "I wish I could go with you."

"You should." Charlie gives him a sharp look. "I don't know how this – this works, but what's to stop you from coming?"

Neil swallows.

"Don’t forget to write," he says.

 

 

                             

Todd's the one who delivers them, in the end. Stands in front of the cave with the paper in his hand and a look of bemusement on his face. "Charlie says I have to open this up otherwise you can't read it," he calls, sounding like he doesn't believe any of it. "Says you're a ghost and only he can see you."

"Pretty bullshit, isn't it?" Neil asks, coming up to the entrance and folding his arms. He hasn't seen Todd in ages. Todd stares blankly ahead. There are lines around his mouth and under his eyes.

"This is stupid," he mutters.

"Tell me about it," Neil says. Wishes he could do something – knock down a tree or manifest himself or something. There are vague rules, like floors and miles of cold rock, and he thinks he can _float_ for whatever pointless reason, but he can't figure any of the rest out.

"Anyway." Todd clears his throat. "If you're here, Neil, I – I miss you a lot."

"Don't be a sap," Neil says.

He lies down flat and reads the letter when Todd is gone. It's all spikes and scribbles, something about _saw the Arc today_ and _cute girls in miniskirts_ and _met a bohemian type who bought me lunch and listened to my sax._ Of course he brought his sax, Neil snorts. Probably charming the hell out of everyone over there with his manic blowing. Thinks about the double entendre and snorts harder.

 _Within there runs blood,_ Charlie writes, feverish and hunched over the desk of his bohemian type. _The same old blood. The same red-running blood. There swells and jets a heart, there all passions, desires, reachings, aspirations. How do you know who shall come from the offspring of his offspring through the centuries?_

 

 

 

"What you need," Charlie drawls lazy as anything, "is a good dose of life."

They're lying on Neil's bed, a tangle of limbs that would be far too compromising for anyone walking through the door to assume otherwise. Leave it unlocked, Charlie had said, sprawling and easy, but Neil wasn’t feeling _that_ brave.

"I am alive," Neil scoffs. Rolls over and presses a kiss to Charlie's cheek. Charlie bats him away irritably.

"No, I mean – " he waves a hand in the air. "Properly, Perry. Not studying day to day to get into the Ivy League. You know how music makes you feel alive – dancing and singing and feeling in your soul – not just your lungs expanding but _breathing_. Not just the arteries and veins but _bleeding_. Gotta do more. Gotta be more."

"You're mad," Neil says, quite delighted.

"I'm mad. I'm mad as hell. And you're a mad man, Neil Perry, to love me."

"I don't – "

"Yes you do." Charlie grins at him, wicked, obnoxious, the only grin that would convince Neil about anything. He's only been Charlie's roommate for a year but it seems like a lifetime of education, late nights and fancy restaurants that more often than not end in bar fights. Neil doesn't let himself want things, thinks it's a weakness, but he then sees Charlie with blood dripping from his nose, fierce and open like a fire in the dark.

It's all he ever wanted. All he ever wanted and more.

"Everyone knows this period is for experimentation," he mumbles, leaning forward and nuzzling Charlie's neck, as unwilling to give as Charlie is unwilling to take. "Bet Vassar's even worse."

"Stop being such a traditionalist pig," Charlie sneers. "Nothing wrong with boys loving boys. All the poets are doing it."

"Are you a poet?"

"Uh-huh."                                                       

"Read me something you wrote."

" _Passionate Experimentation_.” Charlie clears his throat. Beams with the kind of ambitious debauchery no one else can quite match. “By Charles Dalton. The world is going wild – wild. Wild. Gotta get out there. Gotta dance in the willows with the rain beating hard down your back. Gotta weep. That low yellow moon. Reach out and you could touch it. The world is going wild. Gotta put the hand to your throat and squeeze. Close your eyes and step off the ledge and fly.”

“That doesn’t even rhyme,” Neil manages to eke out, which is difficult because Charlie’s been kissing him stupid all the way through, words muttered restless and frenetic against his lips, the nape of his neck.

“We’ll burn down all the cathedrals,” Charlie murmurs, hand wandering down too far, and Neil arches his back with a gasp. “God grows tired of hearing his name on our lips.”

Do more. Be more. Neil feels, just then, that every fibre of his being might explode, every part of him might burst into flame.

 

 

 

_Now to 'scape the serpent's tongue,_

_We will make amends ere long;_

_Else the Puck a liar call;_

_So, good night unto you all._

 

 

 

Neil’s never been to Paris. Only seen it from the pictures, flashing images of bright lights and the Eiffel Tower stark above it all. Socialites milling around cafes blowing smoky rings from cigarettes that hang from their lips. Poets in berets with pencils tucked behind their ears. He imagines Charlie in the midst of that, imagines the two of them living together in a room where the tiles stick up uneven. With one blanket and a rickety bed and a table they fight to use. Papers across the floor, the cover pages of rejected plays, saxophone music filling the air.

 

 

 

“It’s almost graduation,” Todd says, putting the letter down. “I’m going to Yale. I told my parents not to buy me another desk set.”

Neil grins. “About time, man.”

 _Jazz music everywhere_ , Charlie writes. _Hit a little bar near the Invalides. Choked up. The world is wild._

It must be Christmas, or something close to it. The snow is beginning to fall.

Neil closes his eyes. Tries to feel Charlie, wherever he is; tries to follow the yellow brick road, however he can. The world is wild. The world is too difficult to navigate. He finds the silver thread and pulls on it, feels his body dissipating. Floating through the darkness. He reassembles up in a room that looks remarkably like Charlie’s in Long Island, desk and curtains and fireplace. His hand is silver and seethrough again.

Charlie looks up. There's a line of shock across his face that quickly fades into indifference.

"You're not in Paris," Neil says.

"No."

"Did you go?"

"Yeah." Charlie quirks a lip up. "I came back."

“Why?”

Charlie shrugs his shoulders. Long, elegant, and suddenly painful for no reason at all.

“It’s Romantic, Neil. Capital R. Dad didn’t know where I went. It was great. Slumming around, bouncing from place to place, doing whatever the hell I wanted. _Wanting_ to wake up the next day, which I hadn’t wanted for a – while.” He grins. “Everyone called me Nuwanda. No one knew who I was. It was like I was a ghost. Is that what you feel like?”

“Why’d you come back?”

“I told you. It was Romantic. Not sustainable."

"So where are you now?"

Charlie doesn't answer, for a moment. Looks at Neil like it's Hellton. Latin class and they're both bored out of their skulls.

"You knew that this would happen," he says. "That's why you left."

"Charlie."

"Harvard."

"Harvard."

"I'll get out of it. Look. It's a short term thing. I'll be out next year."

 "Uh-huh."

"Neil, don't – "

"Yeah," Neil says, looking down at his body-that-isn't-here. "That's why I left."

The Wendy girl will _live longer_ than you; the Never bird will _live longer_ than you. And you’re shut up in your little house again, and all around you, the various fairy birds a-dying, a-falling away from the Neverland, hanging cocoon corpses in Never trees for the Never worm, for the Never bees.

Charlie takes a breath.

“There's a reason it was the Dead Poets Society," he says.

 

 

 

Neil thinks he finally understands why he's still here. Floating, silent, by Charlie's side, watching him study and say something stupid in class and puff out a little when everyone laughs. It's no phone call from God, and Neil is here because he keeps expecting there to be one.

He alternates between Massachusetts and Vermont. Sometimes the thread weakens when Charlie doesn't want him around. He watches the dust creep onto the poetry, the moss; he waits for Knox or Meeks or Pitts to visit, but no one ever makes an appearance. Perhaps they're all seizing the day. He smiles at the thought of Todd somewhere in Yale, scribbling in his little book of dreams.

Sometimes he makes Charlie go to the school plays, and Charlie only agrees when it isn't Shakespeare. He stands in the aisle along where Charlie sits, where no one else can see him; even if they could they wouldn't be looking, all eyes fixed on stage. There are actors and props and characters breathing. Everything thrums. Everything is fantasy without needing to be real. One night there's a live saxophone and Neil turns his head to see Charlie, half a smile on his face.

Another night it's Tennessee Williams. It's nothing like Puck, running bright-faced through the trees – there is no song, dance, happy ending. He listens with his face turned towards the stage. _Well, sooner or later, at some point in your life, the thing that you lived for is lost or abandoned, and then you die, or find something else._ Chance folds like a pyramid of paper cards touched by the wind and Neil can't look away. _Your time, your youth, you've passed it. It's all you had and you've had it._

Charlie walks back to the dorm afterwards and Neil follows him. He waits for Charlie to say something, but Charlie doesn't. Goes to his room and falls onto the bed, restless for an hour before drifting. Neil stands pressed close to him as he can. Thinks of Charlie switching back to his left hand as Mr. Nolan walked away, thinks how different doing it while holding his gaze would have been. Thinks, maybe I will join the Royal Shakespeare Company. Thinks, _you were crowned with laurel in the beginning, your gold hair was wreathed with laurel, but the gold is thinning and the laurel has withered._

 

 

 

"I don't know if I'm doing the right thing," Neil says.

"Oh, come on." Charlie reaches around and smacks him lightly on the head. "'Course you are. This is what you wanted, wasn't it?"

"Yeah." Neil swallows. "I told Mr. Keating I'd talk to my father."

"Did you?"

"No."

"Thought as much."

"You think I should?"

Charlie sighs. "I don't know, Neil. You know he's going to shoot you down but is that such a bad thing? Just – fighting back, once?"

"You don't know him." Neil's jaw is set. "It would kill me."

There're just the two of them in the cave. Meeks and Pitts have gone to fiddle with their radio, Todd's agonising over some horrible chemistry equation he doesn't want anyone's help with, and the less they see of Cameron the better. Charlie sits up and kisses Neil, light. Pulls him close and threads his fingers into his hair. The play is tomorrow and Neil doesn't know what to do. _Are you sure that we are awake? It seems to me that yet we sleep._

"Channel your inner Nuwanda," Charlie says when he leans back.

Neil makes a face. "Gross. You're not inside of me."

"Want me to be?"

"Cripes." Neil's laughing as he shoves Charlie away. "Don't distract me before my big night."

"After, then." Charlie's all smirks and debonair eyebrows; he always is. "Todd's a big boy. He can do without you for one day."

"Yeah." Neil falls quiet again. Digs his fingers into his palms.

"Hey." Charlie grins, slings an arm round his shoulder. "You'll be good. You'll be really good."

Neil reaches up to hold his hand. Neither let go.

 

 

 

He sees Todd in the snow. He sees Charlie, tears, the only person not singing at the service. Sees Keating at his desk, sobbing into _Five Centuries of Verse_ , all of them as dead as the next. Sees the boys on their tables, like that was all that ever mattered. All that ever meant anything.

 

 

 

The thread dies.

Neil half expects to die, too, one more time; thinks he might vanish into thin air and just stop being, but it doesn't happen. He waits for someone to come collect the books, that maybe someone will miss them, but it doesn't happen.

 

 

 

What happens is: Neil wakes up and he's in a city he doesn't know, fog and buildings that look too old to be so proud. Charlie sitting next to him, staring the other way. Neil sits up and follows his gaze. Down the street there's a tall column and a bronze lion.

"Morning," Charlie says, turning around. "Welcome to London."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." Charlie laughs. "Told you I'd be out by next year."

"For real?"

"Seizing the day."

"We are members of the human race."

"This is what we stay alive for."

Charlie stands up and walks towards the building opposite them. It's stark white and there are seven neat columns above the words GARRICK THEATRE. Neil follows him in, past the glass doors and lavish reception room and bar and into the hall. There isn't anyone inside; just rows and rows of plush red seats, bare stage with the lights on.

"Are we allowed to be here?"

"Probably not." Charlie settles into one of the seats in the front row and folds his hands. "When has that ever stopped us?"

Neil grins. Floats himself up and steps onto the stage. The ground below his feet is somehow solid. The theatre is huge, much bigger than Henley Hall, four levels of would-be people looking at him. There's a sign at the exit saying _closed for renovation_ and _next performance: 29 July._ Of course, he thinks, though he doesn't begrudge anyone. Seizing the day doesn't always mean leaving everything behind. Sometimes it can be as simple as tearing pages out of a book.

"How's your summer, slick?" he asks.

Charlie grins.

"Keen," he says.

Neil meets his smile. Stands straight, tall, and closes his eyes. _And then the whole quire hold their hips and laugh, and waxen in their mirth and neeze and swear; a merrier hour was never wasted there._ Hears the applause. Feels the thump of his heart. The thrum of doing more. Being more. From the moment we enter crying to the moment we leave dying, it will cover our faces as we wail and cry and scream.

He extends his arms, takes a step forward, bows.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> \- Title from good ol' billy jol's Only The Good Die Young. It was originally gonna be from this [1958 play](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Say,_Darling) that has no relevance except I stumbled across it while looking through 'plays from the 1950s', because I am That Person, but then i figured i'm gonna stick to this dumb bet i made with myself.  
> \- Disposable coffee cups were first mdae in 1907 so not an anachronism ok!!! Although Charlie was probably too hipster for them  
> \- _Now more than ever_ \- Keats, Ode to a Nightingale  
>  \- Did you ever notice that Charlie's 'he's good, he's really good' mirrors Neil's 'I was good, I was really good?' because I die  
> \- The left hand comes from the [deleted scenes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_IRNN_XzPs)  
> \- Did you, clever reader, spot the 'did I leave you?/you let me go' Godot reference? Of course you did, smartypants.  
> \- _We're not our skin of grime_ \- Sunflower Sutra, Ginsberg  
>  \- _Gather ye rosebuds_ \- To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time, Herrick  
>  \- _Within there runs blood_ \- I Sing the Body Electric, Whitman  
>  \- Listen all the Beat poets were bangin'  
> \- _Passionate Experimentation_ includes lines from Ginsberg's An Eastern Ballard and Kerouac's Haiku (The low yellow moon)  
>  \- _God grows tired_ \- [Key Ballah](http://identity-mag.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/key-ballah.jpg)  
>  \- _Now to 'scape the serpent's tongue_ \- MSND, Shakespeare  
>  \- _The Wendy girl_ \- not merely because of the unknown that was stalking towards them, Jenny Boully  
>  \- The Williams play is Sweet Bird of Youth, which came out in - you guessed it! - 1959  
> \- The Garrick theatre was named after David Garrick, a great Shakespearean actor, and coincidentally was where I watched my first Shakespeare play! Author Privilege 1, Sense and Reality 0.  
> \- Basically Charlie's just in London for a school holiday or w/e, ambiguously ends everything and sneaks out via the back door (pursued by a bear)  
> \- Thanks for reading <3


End file.
